LARRY'S CORNER- Hamilton's Former Mayor Speaks

Integrity Commissioner’s First Investigation: Much Ado About Nothing

By Larry Di Ianni
(posted August 10, 2009)

It may not be entirely the Commissioner’s fault that his first investigation was a bit of a dud.  He really didn’t have much to work with.  Let’s recap:  When Mayor Fred was elected in a surprise narrow victory against me in November of 2006, he did what any newly elected mayor would do, search about for new staff.  In fact, he did the smart thing by seeking the advice of a group of people to find appropriate expertise for his office.  Whether he took the advice or not is another story. 

He looked at his campaign manager, and in an age-old bout of patronage, appointed him to be his quasi chief of staff.  In the same mold, he hired his campaign driver, and to placate some who had helped him, he hired a city-paid consultant to work in his office as well.  There is nothing particularly sinister about these appointments other than they were of a ‘you scratched my back; I’ll now scratch yours’ tradition.  He also hired some independents to provide continuity and expertise.  One is a reportedly able lady still working for him in his office, and the other was a communications pro with provincial and media experience.  He also kept two competent professionals from my office to run the everyday business of scheduling, office management and correspondence.

Shortly after inauguration, one began hearing murmurs of problems in the mayor’s office.  His two senior political staff were reputed to be at war with each other.  His communications person was angering some local news people.  The Mayor missed some media opportunities and was heavily criticized for it.  He gave a very bad speech at a United Way gala which bordered on the racist.   And Council didn’t seem to be co-operating with the new mayor.  The shake-up which followed was understandable.

His former campaign chair, now staff member, was out the door.  This was apparently a popular move among Council.  But the big surprise was the termination of his communications officer.  This did not go well; and the individual is suing the city for wrongful dismissal.

I actually bumped into this person at a downtown breakfast location sometime after his termination and after his appointment to Afghanistan.    He confirmed his law suit process and cryptically alluded to some ‘ethical issues’ which would come back to bite Fred.  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the musings and chalked them up to fired-employee angst; but I was very interested in the Afghanistan issue and we talked about Canada’s role in that region and his observations of how things were going.

Months later, I learned through the newspaper of the so-called ‘tape-gate’ affair.   I watched as the new mayor admitted on television to possibly breaking Council’s code of conduct.  I was an on-air guest on CHML the day or two after Councillor Clark was being raked over the coals for ‘leaking’ the taped confidential conversation between Fred and Andrew Dreschel of the Spectator.  To make matters worse, the mayor then insisted on a police investigation over allegations of thievery against his former communications director.  What a mess!

It took the interim Integrity Commissioner many, many months to complete his investigation, ostensibly because one of the parties involved was and is still in Afghanistan, and because of the police involvement.  Now, after many tens of thousands of dollars have been spent; after a wild-goose chase involving the Hamilton Police Services who found no grounds to lay charges, the Integrity Commissioner has concluded that Mr. Clark, a politician, was being political in leaking the taped conversation between the mayor and Dreschel.  How much did it cost to discover that in Hamilton (or anywhere for that matter) politicians are sometimes motivated by politics rather than substance? 

There is no question that it is always interesting to see the backroom motivations of the political class, but one has to wonder if the whole story wasn’t discovered as soon as the issue became public.  Very little, if anything, new has been added by the lengthy and expensive Integrity Commissioner’s investigation.  The report confirms the obvious:  politicians will behave ‘politically’ whenever they can.  This is truly a ‘dog bites man’ story!

The only ‘new’ confirmation rather than revelation is that a former staff member’s rights were trampled on by releasing private information publicly.  I refer to the commissioner’s distinction between the tape belonging to the former media co-ordinator, and the information on the tape which, as the commissioner points out, is subject to the city of Hamilton’s and the province’s rules of confidentiality.  The fact that the Mayor initiated the transgression by releasing the information to a columnist, then followed by the former Mayor’s staff member who released the information to a Councillor and then the Councillor by releasing the information to two other colleagues and another reporter means that the staff member’s rights were being stomped on by just about everybody involved.  She would have a pretty strong civil case to make in court, should she choose to for reparation and punitive damages.  I hope this doesn’t happen because more taxpayer money would be at risk.

I would finally add that the commissioner’s report isn’t beyond politics itself.  After all, a report which is released many months after people were first aware of the issues, a report which is delivered in the dog days of summer, a report which was not immediately released publicly, a report that chastises one member of council for ‘being political’ without redeeming reasons, thereby breaking a code (Clark), and another for breaking the code, being political perhaps about the police investigation, but had redeeming reasons for setting the record straight (Eisenberger), might also itself be accused of being a ‘political document’ trying to justify its own expenditure.

The fact that the Integrity Commissioner recommends taking no punitive actions against Councillor Clark other than to receive the report suggests that even he feels that a mountain was made out of a molehill.  Let’s hope that Council simply quietly accepts the conclusions and moves on.

BACK TO LARRY'S CORNER

HOME